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Geminiviruses cause serious symptoms and devastating losses in crop plants. With a circular, single-stranded DNA genome, geminiviruses multiply their genomic DNA in the nucleus, requiring the nuclear shuttling of viral proteins and viral genomic DNAs. Many host factors, acting as proviral or antiviral factors, play key roles in geminivirus infections. Here, we report the roles of a tomato glutaredoxin (GRX), SlGRXC6, in the infection of Tomato yellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV), a single-component geminivirus. The V2 protein of TYLCV specifically and preferentially interacts with SlGRXC6 among the 55-member tomato GRX family that are broadly involved in oxidative stress responses, plant development, and pathogen responses. We show that overexpressed SlGRXC6 increases the nuclear accumulation of V2 by inhibiting its nuclear export and, in turn, inhibits trafficking of the V1 protein and viral genomic DNA. Conversely, the silenced expression of SlGRXC6 leads to an enhanced susceptibility to TYLCV. SlGRXC6 is also involved in symptom development as we observed a positive correlation where overexpression of SlGRXC6 promotes while knockdown of SlGRXC6 expression inhibits plant growth. We further showed that SlGRXC6 works with SlNTRC80, a tomato NADPH-dependent thioredoxin reductase, to regulate plant growth. V2 didn’t interact with SlNTRC80 but competed with SlNTR80 for binding to SlGRXC6, suggesting that the V2-disrupted SlGRXC6-SlNTRC80 interaction is partially responsible for the virus-caused symptoms. These results suggest that SlGRXC6 functions as a host restriction factor that inhibits the nuclear trafficking of viral components and point out a new way to control TYLCV infection by targeting the V2-SlGRXC6 interaction.

Tetraena mongolica , Zygophyllum xanthoxylon , and Z . fabago are three typical dryland plants with important ecological values in subfamily Zygophylloideae of Zygophyllaceae. Studies on the chloroplast genomes of them are favorable for understanding the diversity and phylogeny of Zygophyllaceae. Here, we sequenced and assembled the whole chloroplast genomes of T . mongolica , Z . xanthoxylon , and Z . fabago , and performed comparative genomic and phylogenetic analysis. The total size, structure, gene content and orders of these three chloroplast genomes were similar, and the three chloroplast genomes exhibited a typical quadripartite structure with a large single-copy region (LSC; 79,696–80,291 bp), a small single-copy region (SSC; 16,462–17,162 bp), and two inverted repeats (IRs; 4,288–4,413 bp). A total of 107 unique genes were identified from the three chloroplast genomes, including 70 protein-coding genes, 33 tRNAs, and 4 rRNAs. Compared with other angiosperms, the three chloroplast genomes were significantly reduced in overall length due to an unusual 16–24 kb shrinkage of IR regions and loss of the 11 genes which encoded subunits of NADH dehydrogenase. Genome-wide comparisons revealed similarities and variations between the three species and others. Phylogenetic analysis based on the three chloroplast genomes supported the opinion that Zygophyllaceae belonged to Zygophyllales in Fabids, and Z . xanthoxylon and Z . fabago belonged to Zygophyllum . The genome-wide comparisons revealed the similarity and variations between the chloroplast genomes of the three Zygophylloideae species and other plant species. This study provides a valuable molecular biology evidence for further studies of phylogenetic status of Zygophyllaceae.

RNA processing and decay pathways have important impacts on RNA viruses, particularly animal-infecting bunyaviruses, which utilize a cap-snatching mechanism to translate their mRNAs. However, their effects on plant-infecting bunyaviruses have not been investigated. The roles of mRNA degradation and non-sense-mediated decay components, including DECAPPING 2 (DCP2), EXORIBONUCLEASE 4 (XRN4), ASYMMETRIC LEAVES2 (AS2) and UP-FRAMESHIFT 1 (UPF1) were investigated in infection of Arabidopsis thaliana by several RNA viruses, including the bunyavirus, tomato spotted wilt virus (TSWV). TSWV infection on mutants with decreased or increased RNA decapping ability resulted in increased and decreased susceptibility, respectively. By contrast, these mutations had the opposite, or no, effect on RNA viruses that use different mRNA capping strategies. Consistent with this, the RNA capping efficiency of TSWV mRNA was higher in a dcp2 mutant. Furthermore, the TSWV N protein partially colocalized with RNA processing body (PB) components and altering decapping activity by heat shock or coinfection with another virus resulted in corresponding changes in TSWV accumulation. The present results indicate that TSWV infection in plants depends on its ability to snatch caps from mRNAs destined for decapping in PBs and that genetic or environmental alteration of RNA processing dynamics can affect infection outcomes.

In the field of quality control, metal surface defect detection is an important yet challenging task. Although YOLO models perform well in most object detection scenarios, metal surface images under operational conditions often exhibit coexisting high-frequency noise components and spectral aliasing background textures, and defect targets typically exhibit characteristics such as small scale, weak contrast, and multi-class coexistence, posing challenges for automatic defect detection systems. To address this, we introduce concepts including wavelet decomposition, cross-attention, and U-shaped dilated convolution into the YOLO framework, proposing the YOLOv11-WBD model to enhance feature representation capability and semantic mining effectiveness. To improve robustness, a plug-and-play Wavelet-Attentive Multiband Fusion Module (WAMF) is designed, achieving decoupling of low-frequency and high-frequency features and adaptive multi-frequency fusion. To effectively aggregate multi-scale features, a Bottleneck-Enhanced Dilated U-Conv Module (BEDU) is designed, fusing global and local information with lower computational resource consumption. To address feature fusion, a Bidirectional Depthwise Cross-Attention Module (BDCA) is designed to replace simple concatenation and convolution operations, achieving adaptive feature fusion. YOLOv11-WBD undergoes rigorous evaluation on the public NEU-DET and GC10-DET datasets; experimental results show that the improved model achieves performance gains on both datasets: the mAP@0.5 metric increased by 5.8% and 2.8% respectively. Furthermore, the improved model demonstrates stronger noise tolerance, maintaining high defect detection capability even in moderate noise environments, providing a valuable solution for industrial applications.

A major antiviral mechanism in plants is mediated by RNA silencing through the action of DICER-like (DCL) proteins, which cleave dsRNA into discrete small RNA fragments, and ARGONAUTE (AGO) proteins, which use the small RNAs to target single-stranded RNA. RNA silencing can also be amplified through the action of RNA-dependent RNA polymerases (RDRs), which use single stranded RNA to generate dsRNA that in turn is targeted by DCL proteins. As a counter-defense, plant viruses encode viral suppressors of RNA silencing (VSRs) that target different components in the RNA silencing pathway. The tomato Ty-1 gene confers resistance to the DNA virus tomato yellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV) and has been reported to encode an RDRγ protein. However, the molecular mechanisms by which Ty-1 controls TYLCV infection, including whether Ty-1 is involved in RNA silencing, are unknown. Here, by using a transient expression assay, we have confirmed that Ty-1 shows antiviral activity against TYLCV in Nicotiana benthamiana. Also, in transient expression-based silencing assays, Ty-1 augmented systemic transgene silencing in GFP transgenic N. benthamiana plants. Furthermore, co-expression of Ty-1 or other RDRγ proteins from N. benthamiana or Arabidopsis with various proteins resulted in lower protein expression. These results are consistent with a model wherein Ty-1 -mediated resistance to TYLCV is due, at least in part, to an increase in RNA silencing activity.

Viral pathogens are a major threat to rice production worldwide. Although RNA interference (RNAi) is known to mediate antiviral immunity in plant and animal models, the mechanism of antiviral RNAi in rice and other economically important crops is poorly understood. Here, we report that rice resistance to evolutionarily diverse viruses requires Argonaute18 (AGO18). Genetic studies reveal that the antiviral function of AGO18 depends on its activity to sequester microRNA168 (miR168) to alleviate repression of rice AGO1 essential for antiviral RNAi. Expression of miR168-resistant AGO1a in ago18 background rescues or increases rice antiviral activity. Notably, stable transgenic expression of AGO18 confers broad-spectrum virus resistance in rice. Our findings uncover a novel cooperative antiviral activity of two distinct AGO proteins and suggest a new strategy for the control of viral diseases in rice. Rice is a major food crop, providing over a fifth of all calories consumed by people around the world. As such, it is important to find ways to prevent the diseases that affect rice plants. Many of the viruses that infect rice are transferred between plants by insects and many insects carry more than one virus at a time; this means it can be difficult to predict where a disease will next emerge. As a result, there is a pressing need to develop new and effective strategies that boost the ability of rice plants to fight off harmful viruses. One way that plants defend themselves from viruses involves using a system called RNA interference to identify and destroy the RNA molecules that viruses produce. This process depends on the Argonaute (AGO) family of proteins, although the roles of many of its members are not well understood. One of the better-studied AGO proteins is called AGO1 and is known to be important for defending plants against viruses. Unfortunately, a small RNA molecule called miR168 acts to limit the amount of AGO1 in a cell, and the levels of miR168 increase in virus-infected rice plants. Wu, Yang et al. exposed rice plants to two species of insect that each carried a different plant virus. Rice plants infected with these viruses increased their levels of both AGO1 and another AGO protein called AGO18. Modifying the ability of rice plants to produce AGO18 revealed that the anti-viral activity of AGO1 is abolished in plants lacking AGO18. However, plants that over-produce AGO18 are better able to fight off viral infections. Wu, Yang et al. further showed that AGO18 binds to miR168 and so prevents this small RNA from reducing AGO1 levels. Therefore, AGO1 and AGO18 work together to defend rice plants from viruses. Wu, Yang et al. suggest that engineering rice plants to make more AGO18 could make them more resistant to viruses. Further work will be needed to confirm whether AGO1 and AGO18 also work together to defend rice against viruses other than the two tested so far and to investigate whether these proteins also perform similar roles in other crops.

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) is one of the common clinical treatments, but adverse effects have hampered and limited the clinical application and promotion of hyperbaric oxygen therapy. A systematic review and meta-analysis of the adverse effects of hyperbaric oxygen therapy have conducted by our group to provide a theoretical basis for clinical treatment. Three electronic databases (PubMed, Web of Science, and The Cochrane Library) were comprehensively searched for randomized clinical trials (RCTs) from March 2012 to October 2022. Two reviewers independently screened titles and abstracts for eligibility and assessed the quality of the included studies. The meta-analysis was performed using RevMan 5.3. A total of 24 RCTs involving 1,497 participants were identified. ① The HBOT group reported more adverse effects (30.11% vs. 10.43%, < 0.05). ② The most frequent side effect of HBOT is ear discomfort (113 cases). ③ When the course of hyperbaric oxygen was >10 sessions, the incidence of adverse effects was higher than that of the control group; when the course of HBOT was ≤10 sessions, the adverse effects caused by hyperbaric oxygen were comparatively lower. ④ When the chamber pressure is above 2.0 ATA, the incidence of adverse effects is higher than that of the control group. While the chamber pressure is lower than 2.0 ATA, HBOT is relatively safe compared with the previous one. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) is more likely to cause adverse reactions when the chamber pressure is above 2.0 ATA. More attention should be paid to the possible occurrence of related adverse effects if the treatment course is >10 sessions. https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/, identifier CRD42022316605.

The white backed planthopper (WBPH), Sogatella furcifera (Horváth), causes great damage to many crops by direct feeding or transmitting plant viruses. Southern rice black-streaked dwarf virus (SRBSDV), transmitted by WBPH, has become a great threat to rice production in East Asia. By de novo transcriptome assembling and massive parallel pyrosequencing, we constructed two transcriptomes of WBPH and profiled the alternation of gene expression in response to SRBSDV infection in transcriptional level. Over 25 million reads of high-quality DNA sequences and 81388 different unigenes were generated using Illumina technology from both viruliferous and non-viruliferous WBPH. WBPH has a very similar gene ontological distribution to other two closely related rice planthoppers, Nilaparvata lugens and Laodelphax striatellus. 7291 microsatellite loci were also predicted which could be useful for further evolutionary analysis. Furthermore, comparative analysis of the two transcriptomes generated from viruliferous and non-viruliferous WBPH provided a list of candidate transcripts that potentially were elicited as a response to viral infection. Pathway analyses of a subset of these transcripts indicated that SRBSDV infection may perturb primary metabolism and the ubiquitin-proteasome pathways. In addition, 5.5% (181 out of 3315) of the genes in cell cytoskeleton organization pathway showed obvious changes. Our data also demonstrated that SRBSDV infection activated the immunity regulatory systems of WBPH, such as RNA interference, autophagy and antimicrobial peptide production. We employed massively parallel pyrosequencing to collect ESTs from viruliferous and non-viruliferous samples of WBPH. 81388 different unigenes have been obtained. We for the first time described the direct effects of a Reoviridae family plant virus on global gene expression profiles of its insect vector using high-throughput sequencing. Our study will provide a road map for future investigations of the fascinating interactions between Reoviridae viruses and their insect vectors, and provide new strategies for crop protection.

This study solidifies the aeolian sand by microbial-induced carbonate precipitation (MICP) technique. The effects of cementation solution with different concentrations, particle size, and grouting batches are examined via the bender element, unconfined compressive test, and scanning electron microscope (SEM). The bender element results show that the wave speed of loose aeolian sand is 200 m/s; however, after solidification of the aeolian sand, the speed of P-wave is about 450-600 m/s and S-wave is about 350-500 m/s. Additionally, the unconfined compressive strength (UCS) results indicate that when the concentration of cementation solution is 0.75 mol/L, the UCS of biosolidified sand sample is the highest. Then, compared with the aeolian sand with original grade, the particles ranging from 0.1 to 0.4 mm have a better cementation effect. Moreover, the UCS of biosolidified sand samples increases along with the grouting batch. From the SEM images, it can be seen that when the grouting batch reaches to five times, the particles are almost completely covered by CaCO3 crystals compared with the three batches and four batches.

The double-row pile supporting structure has been widely used in foundation pit excavations. When analyzing the effect of earth pressure on the pile structure, previous research only considered the double-row piles as the rigid body and the pile-soil interaction has not been examined. In this study, a theoretical model was developed based on Duncan-Chang’s hyperbolic theory to calculate earth pressures in the active and passive zones of the double-row pile supporting structure. The model considered the nonlinear effect of the pile deformation on the active and passive earth pressures. The macroscopic pile-soil interaction was converted into a microscopic stress-strain relationship at a certain point in the soil body, reflecting the nonlinear effect of pile deformation on earth pressure. Numerical simulation and large-scale field tests have been conducted to verify the proposed model. The results show that the average values of the parameters obtained by numerical simulation are a¯=0.38, b¯=−0.253 for the active zone and a¯=0.00612, b¯=−0.729 for the passive zone. Based on the values of a¯ and b¯, the predicted active and passive earth pressures stemming from the developed model agreed well with those obtained from field tests. The developed model in this study can be used to predict the distribution of active and passive earth pressures for double-row pile supporting structures.